[Deaths] on campaign
Title: afternoon errands
'Verse/characters: Deaths; the First of China, an unlucky tea seller, the Morrigan
Prompt: 35D "walk"
Word Count: 421
Notes: I don't write him often, for simple reasons of insufficient research, but here, have some campaign era sketching.
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He's spent more time walking in the last year than he did in at least two centuries previous to it. His feet have been sore, his temper uneven, and while it's been tempting to take it out on the tiny rude woman the De'Ath persists in allowing into everything--and to the man's credit she is something to behold on a battlefield--he had largely restrained himself and taken out his irritation instead on the idiots the De'Ath is dealing with instead.
The temptation to do something about the horrible things that woman did to perfectly good tea has been enormous.
The temptation to do something to the tea seller who had just claimed that the underlying scent of mold was appropriate to a jasmine infused green is irresistible.
He does a minor visual check of surroundings, finds the appropriate markers, then reaches into his shirt and lays down a small jade carving, half covers it with his palm as he places both his hands flat on the counter, neatly to the side of the moldy canister.
Fear flares faintly behind the seller's eyes.
"Are you aware," he inquires, in a civilised language, "that at home what you have just claimed is a whipping offence?"
Fear makes the man stammer, but he replies well enough that this is not home, and the laws and codes are different.
He does not smile in response to that, though something curls pleasantly in his gut as he relaxes just that edge enough to begin to show what he is, to men who've led less than entirely peaceful lives.
Poison was one of the ways he died, a long, long time ago. He has little taste for bad food and less for bad tea, and the last tangle with idiots was only three days ago.
Lightning crackles in a tiny arc between his thumbs, still placed gently on the wooden, battered surface of the counter.
Fear blooms across the man's face, and it only grows when he introduces himself.
The tiny rude woman gives him a jaundiced glance when he returns, tea-less, but glowing faintly, and says "If that was the only seller in this city I'm going to be cross with you."
"Men who sell molded leaves deserve everything they get," he replies evenly, unexpectedly calm in the face of her tea-making.
She blinks, then shakes her head, sends a curl tumbling out of a pin down along her temple. "Good thing you don't have a taste for coffee and weren't here two hundred years ago."
'Verse/characters: Deaths; the First of China, an unlucky tea seller, the Morrigan
Prompt: 35D "walk"
Word Count: 421
Notes: I don't write him often, for simple reasons of insufficient research, but here, have some campaign era sketching.
---------
He's spent more time walking in the last year than he did in at least two centuries previous to it. His feet have been sore, his temper uneven, and while it's been tempting to take it out on the tiny rude woman the De'Ath persists in allowing into everything--and to the man's credit she is something to behold on a battlefield--he had largely restrained himself and taken out his irritation instead on the idiots the De'Ath is dealing with instead.
The temptation to do something about the horrible things that woman did to perfectly good tea has been enormous.
The temptation to do something to the tea seller who had just claimed that the underlying scent of mold was appropriate to a jasmine infused green is irresistible.
He does a minor visual check of surroundings, finds the appropriate markers, then reaches into his shirt and lays down a small jade carving, half covers it with his palm as he places both his hands flat on the counter, neatly to the side of the moldy canister.
Fear flares faintly behind the seller's eyes.
"Are you aware," he inquires, in a civilised language, "that at home what you have just claimed is a whipping offence?"
Fear makes the man stammer, but he replies well enough that this is not home, and the laws and codes are different.
He does not smile in response to that, though something curls pleasantly in his gut as he relaxes just that edge enough to begin to show what he is, to men who've led less than entirely peaceful lives.
Poison was one of the ways he died, a long, long time ago. He has little taste for bad food and less for bad tea, and the last tangle with idiots was only three days ago.
Lightning crackles in a tiny arc between his thumbs, still placed gently on the wooden, battered surface of the counter.
Fear blooms across the man's face, and it only grows when he introduces himself.
The tiny rude woman gives him a jaundiced glance when he returns, tea-less, but glowing faintly, and says "If that was the only seller in this city I'm going to be cross with you."
"Men who sell molded leaves deserve everything they get," he replies evenly, unexpectedly calm in the face of her tea-making.
She blinks, then shakes her head, sends a curl tumbling out of a pin down along her temple. "Good thing you don't have a taste for coffee and weren't here two hundred years ago."